


Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, No Really, Who

by psocoptera



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Bob Knew Last, Graduation, M/M, Parent-Child Relationship, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:27:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22651750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: One parent's desperate struggle to figure out his son's love life (while minding his own business and not asking).
Relationships: Alicia Zimmermann/Bob Zimmermann, Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, Kent "Parse" Parson/Jack Zimmermann, Shitty Knight/Jack Zimmermann
Comments: 34
Kudos: 363





	Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, No Really, Who

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote most of this years ago after the end of Year 2 but rediscovered it recently and decided to finish it. AU for Jack's graduation and travel plans during the summer of 2015.
> 
> Content notes: brief mentions of drug use, drinking, and dieting. Parse does not appear but is a major presence in the story. Bob and Alicia express negative sentiments towards Parse including fantasized violence but never interact with him.

Bob is going through the chords for "Fly By Night" when Alicia nudges him.

"You know," she whispers, "If we'd given him _my_ name, we'd be done by now."

Bob relaxes his fingers on his thigh and whispers back. "We'd still be stuck here," he points out; the rows of Samwell graduates are filing right back into their folding chairs once they come down from the stage, and while a few parents have left, Bob isn't going to be seen doing that.

"Yes, but we'd know he made it," she says, almost voiceless but still somehow enunciating with the muscles of her face.

"I don't think anything is going to happen at this point," Bob whispers, and Alicia jabs him hard in the leg.

"Don't _say_ that," she hisses. "You of all people should know better."

"There are no bad bounces at graduations," Bob says out of the side of his mouth, trying to keep up some pretense of still paying attention to the stage. "Besides, it's just a formality."

"I want to see him up there," Alicia whispers. "There could be... hail or something. Tornados."

"It's not gonna hail," Bob says, slightly louder than he meant to; a woman in front of him looks back over her shoulder, fortunately not seeming to recognize him, at least, maybe not even understanding French.

Bob considers reminding his wife that _she'd_ told _him_ that morning that the forecast looked fine - now that he thinks about it, she'd been watching the weather channel in their hotel room with unusual concern. Probably unhelpful to say that though.

"I just want to see him up there," she repeats. To be fair, there had been a year of Bob's life when he thought a lot about Jack pulling on a hockey sweater onstage; this is what they get instead, the cap and gown, so it's more than a formality.

"He's going to make it," Bob whispers. There isn't really anything else they can do but try to believe that. He takes Alicia's hand. With his other hand, he starts going through the fingering for "Wonderful Tonight". Onstage, the graduates keep on crossing into the future.

*

Jack is in the last row of graduates. Bob starts paying close attention when they stand up. He'd almost missed Shitty earlier, ears not attuned for 'Barnabas Knight', and it was only some hollers of "Shitty!" from elsewhere in the audience, probably Adam and Justin, that had made him realize his son's ...friend was shaking hands with the Dean.

Bob is 90% sure that Jack's been dating Shitty for the past three-plus years. He's always around, he's always undressed, and when he'd come to visit Jack after their freshman year, Bob had accidentally overheard them in the shower together in a way that he couldn't really pretend was anything other than what it obviously was, as much as he would have liked to. Not that Bob _disapproved_ , but he could be happy for his son and still not want to hear him going at it, right?

Anyways, Bob had duly watched him graduate, privately losing a bet with himself as to whether his legs would be bare under his robe (they weren't), and then zoned out until they finally got to the end: Wright and Wroblewski and Wu and two Yangs and a Young and Yu and Zaxaros and Ziegler and then Zimmermann. Bob has to blink a little, when they get to Zimmermann, seeing his boy up there, so grown up, accomplishing something Bob never had.

Alicia fist-pumps next to him when Jack takes his diploma, less misty-eyed than "grinning fiercely". She's fidgety through the rest of the ceremony (Zucker and Zuniga and closing remarks) and practically leaps out of her seat at the final applause.

Bob trails after her as she plows through the milling graduates and families - she's tall in her heels, freshly blonde for the occasion, and he's always secretly enjoyed feeling less-obvious in her shadow. They find Jack just as Shitty does, and watch him leap into Jack's arms from as far back as he can get a running start in the crowd. His robe flaps up as he wraps his legs around Jack's waist, and it turns out the clothes on his legs are leg warmers or something, because that's definitely a bare ass and thighs above them. And definitely Jack's hands on that ass holding Shitty up. Bob isn't sure if he should look away, especially when Shitty yanks Jack's head down into a very enthusiastic kiss, but Alicia has her camera out, for fuck's sake, so this is apparently a fine family moment.

Alicia moves in for the hug as soon as Jack sets Shitty down, getting one arm around each of them and squeezing, only letting go when Bob taps the arm holding Jack.

Jack has been Bob's height for years now, but somehow it still surprises Bob; he'd been this tiny, squishy, floppy thing once, and part of Bob is still expecting to look down. Thinks of him as the height he'd been when he left for Rimouski, maybe.

There's a commotion behind them and Bob lets go of Jack to see the whole hockey Haus hug-piling onto Shitty: Adam and Justin and little Eric, and Larissa somehow getting Shitty in a headlock despite barely coming up to his shoulder. Jack gets his arms around as many of them as he can, and Alicia sniffs and takes more pictures.

*

Dinner is noisy, with all two or possibly three factions of Shitty's family not bothering to not talk over each other, and the kids clumped at the end trying to talk about hockey. Bob would much rather talk about hockey than whatever point Shitty's grandfather keeps trying to make, but his goal here is a nice farewell dinner for the boys, so he can block a few shots. He manages to intercept the check on a well-timed restroom excursion and quietly enjoys the consternation of the Knights when they realize.

Jack thanks him in the car afterwards.

"Well," Bob starts, pretty sure that's the cue for some sort of "we're so glad you have nice college friends" statement.

"I'm going to visit Shitty in late June," Jack says. "He wants to go to Harpers Ferry. And, ah, Paint Creek?"

"That sounds nice," Bob says. He has no idea where either of those places are, or why Shitty would want to visit them, but they're not immediately alarming the way something like Miami Beach would be.

"I'll go from there to Georgia, to see Bittle," Jack adds. "And then Kent asked me to go backpacking with him. In Wyoming."

Alicia, in the passenger seat, sucks in a breath; the rental car is pretty quiet, like Bob's own cars, so Jack probably hears.

"He says on the less popular trails, you hardly see anyone," Jack says a little defensively. "You know Toews got recognized in Peru, so - "

"You'll have to take lots of pictures," Alicia says diplomatically. "Jackson Hole is so beautiful, but I've never been into the backcountry. But I'm surprised, no Larissa?"

"Lardo's coming down to help me set up my apartment when I'm back in Providence," Jack says.

Bob glances over; Alicia looks pleased. She's told Bob more than once that she thinks it's good for Jack to have friends who are girls. "I'm not saying he should _date_ one," she always clarifies. "But especially if he's going to date hockey players, he needs someone in his life who isn't."

Larissa might not be a player, but she's definitely Team, so Bob isn't sure he really gets Alicia's point. But then, maybe that is her point, that there's stuff that men don't get. It doesn't really matter; in the great division of the world into what might help or hurt Jack, Larissa is not why Bob's hands are clenched on the steering wheel right now, or why he's having to watch the speedometer to make sure he doesn't step too hard on the pedal.

They drop Jack off at the Haus, agreeing that they'll be back to pick him up around 11, allowing themselves a nice cushion of time for whatever traffic stupidity Boston might throw at them on the way to the airport. Five minutes ago, this was probably going to be a drawn-out goodnight reiterating everything they'd said on the way to the restaurant (very proud, so happy, what a big day, etc), but now Alicia keeps it light and brief. She and Bob and Jack are all the same - let go with one emotion and it's easy to let the rest slip out too. The lights are on in the Haus and Jack is looking at the door more than he's looking at Bob or Alicia. This is not the time to start saying things they don't mean to say.

Alicia waits until Jack is through the door to pound her hand on the dashboard.

"What is he _thinking_?"

"I don't like it either," Bob says. He pulls away from the curb. Thirteen minutes back to the hotel.

"I can't believe this," Alicia says. "Backpacking? So he'll be all alone, in the middle of nowhere, completely cut off from any kind of support, nowhere to go, no one he can call - "

"He's so close," Bob says. "Not saying he has to play, but to get this close, and - " He doesn't want to put it into words, all the things he's thinking might happen. They're sitting heavy in his stomach with the steak from dinner. 

"I should have scared Kent off before he could get to Jack again," Alicia says hyperbolically. "Pushed him down the stairs like the mom in that Lifetime movie."

"You hated that movie," Bob says. "You said that part was the worst you'd ever taken."

"Even a stopped clock," Alicia says grimly. Bob looks over - she's winding the strap of her purse tightly around her hand, like she's strangling her own fingers.

Bob has always made sure to be Good Bob everywhere but the ice; Alicia's violence is sort of like her eye-catching blondeness, something that makes him feel camouflaged in comparison. "I'd like to smash that guy's face in with a stick," she would say, after Bob had to smile politely in interviews about some nasty cross-check. There's something soothing about focusing on driving, following the GPS back to the hotel, while Alicia next to him gets outraged for them both. It keeps him safely away from the dark moment when he had seen his son in a hospital bed and thought about how easy it would be to put Kent in one next to him.

"When the wind picked up during the ceremony," Alicia says, when they're back in their room and she's unbuckling the straps of her heels. "For a minute, I thought it _was_ a tornado - I know, that's crazy, but I was thinking about tornados, and all I could think was, 'okay, I'm going to have to fight a tornado now'." She rubs the arches of her feet, wincing. "I don't know - what can I do, if Jack wants this, there's nothing we can do - "

"Hey," Bob says. He finishes hanging up his suit jacket and sits down next to her on the bed. "I know you would fight a tornado. It'll be okay."

"I know," Alicia says. "I mean, one game at a time, right? We just have to keep our heads down, one shift at a time, look out for bounces - "

Bob pokes her in the hip. "Hmpf."

"I just don't want to be asking myself _again_ if there's something we could have done," Alicia says, slumping against his shoulder. "I know he's an adult now. But I would still fight a tornado for him, you know?"

"I guess there's always another bridge to cross," Bob says.

"He did graduate," Alicia says, sitting up straight again. "I'm just going to... focus on that."

Milestones, unlike records, can't ever be broken; Bob hums the graduation march while he takes off his tie and cufflinks and Alicia sheds her jewelry. It was a long day, but they all made it through it. Now opening night is the next big day, Bob guesses. And just a summer to get through first.

*

The thing is, Bob had never liked Kent. Alicia had. Alicia had thought Bob was being ridiculous, at first, and then, after she had said "I think Jack has a crush" and "I think they're more than teammates", she had thought he was being homophobic. Which still stings a little, if Bob is honest. He hadn't liked Kent, but that wasn't why. But Alicia had liked him, and liked him extra for being special to Jack, right up until Jack had woken up in the hospital and said "don't blame Kenny, he thought I could handle it".

It had been like Jack shouting "don't come down here," as a small child, when he'd shot a puck into the lamp. Reverse psychology. Alicia had blamed Kent instantly and thoroughly, and none of the subsequent details about the extra refills and the things-they-only-ever-did-at-parties had absolved him to her. She had cried, in one of their joint counseling sessions without Jack, over how she'd tried to give Jack and Kent space and privacy, and maybe it was her fault.

Bob had been a total dick about interrupting them in the basement, doing it constantly, even more than his own mother when she'd been terrified he was going to get Eloise Chambard pregnant at sixteen, and that hadn't helped anything. Bob agrees with the family therapist that the Kent mess was just a sideshow, and the crisis had always been brewing at the fault line between Jack's anxiety and hockey-world pressure.

Bob doesn't like Kent because the first time he really saw him away from the ice was at a team banquet, and Kent was obviously bored. Bored and uninterested in any of the awards being given to anyone who wasn't him or Jack, like the rest of the team weren't even worth naming or noticing, because they weren't going to make the NHL.

"That is so unfair," Alicia had said. " _You_ were bored, you're always bored at those things, _you_ hardly pay attention to the rest of the kids out there, you're _projecting_ \- "

Bob is pretty sure that when he was sixteen he had genuinely loved his goalie and his lineys and had never yawned while they were being recognized. He also doesn't like Kent because he'd caught him looking in the liquor cabinet while he was over for dinner, and then three months later, a four-hundred-dollar bottle of tequila had gone missing, and Jack had confessed to taking it.

"To a party, to impress his friends, which could not be more normal teenaged behavior!" Alicia had said. "No, I'm not saying we should tell him it's okay, but between you and me, he has _friends_ , that's worth a hundred bottles! You have no proof that Kent put him up to it, that was months ago, and you have told me about your little stunt with the family car, like father, like son, perhaps?"

It was true that Bob, as a sixteen-year-old, had once taken the family car without permission, to go driving (and parking) with Eloise Chambard. His father had reported it stolen and it had been a bit of a mess. But Alicia hadn't seen the evaluating look in Kent's eyes.

"I just don't like him," Bob had said, which Alicia couldn't tell him to be rational about, because it wasn't. Although it had been useless; having been right, later, had felt about as awful as having been wrong had felt to Alicia.

*

They've barely pulled up to the Haus when Jack comes hustling out the door with his luggage, like he was watching out the window. Shitty and Adam and Justin and Larissa all spill out after him, onto the porch, but Jack must have already said his goodbyes, because he doesn't turn back, except to smile and wave. Shitty is shaking an enormous red bandanna like he's watching a ship sail away, only the color makes it look like he's trying to start a bullfight or something. When Jack opens the door of the rental car, Shitty stops waving the bandanna and blows his nose into it, and Larissa pats him on the back.

Bob turns to check on Jack, but Jack, himself, doesn't look teary. He looks as happy as he's looked all graduation weekend. Bob hopes everything is okay there, with Shitty. Jack had announced his travel plans as all one piece, but Shitty can't have been thrilled to hear that Jack was going backpacking with his ex on the same trip as their road trip. Even in a trusting relationship, that feels like a lot of trust to ask for.

They return the rental car with plenty of time, breeze through the priority lines, wait in the first class lounge. Bob settles in on the plane, playing "Fly By Night" on his leg, while Jack and Alicia race to see who can finish more of the in-flight magazine crossword before the plane is in the air. They end up with a fifteen-minute delay on the runway and Jack and Alicia both finish, Alicia slightly faster.

"I'm rusty," Jack says, and then shrugs. "Guess I'll be doing enough flying soon."

"No in-flight magazine on the team charter," Bob says. "You're going to have to remember a paper or something."

"Maybe you could have a club, like the Capitals!" Alicia says. "I liked that article."

"Maybe," Jack says. Jack had walked them through his reasoning about signing with the Falconers, and he'd said he'd felt good about the team, but Bob knows it's a big step from thinking you could mesh as players to really picturing yourself spending most of your time with them. Bob has at least six pieces of advice about that, all on the tip of his tongue, all of which he's ruthlessly holding himself back from giving. He tries to treat advice like cheating on his diet, now - save it for when it's gonna be really worthwhile, when Jack might actually appreciate it.

The flight isn't long, but it's long enough for Bob and Jack to put in their earbuds, and for Alicia to open her Kindle - Bob looks over her shoulder, but it looks like something boring, about a record store or something. Not, say, werewolf porn, which Bob had thought was hilarious, although maybe not something she'd be reading with Jack right there. (If Jack reads werewolf porn, Bob doesn't want to know.)

The cleaners came right before they flew down for graduation, so Jack's room is dusted, and there are fresh linens on the bed. Jack graciously lets Bob carry one of his bags up the stairs - he's obviously indulging him, but Bob'll take it, makes him feel a little bit further from completely obsolete.

He has to step into his own room for a few minutes, and when he comes back, he can hear Jack's voice through his door. He must have gotten onto Skype as soon as he took his laptop out of his bag. Bob can't tell who he's talking to. Not that he's eavesdropping outside his son's door, but, just, in passing, as he heads for the stairs, he can't help hearing Jack chuckle at something.

*

Jack's time at home with them flies by. They go to a few favorite restaurants, go see the new Mad Max movie, which Adam and Justin apparently insist Jack has to see. Bob can remember seeing the first one with some of the guys on the Habs, thirty-five or forty years ago. Alicia says she's never seen any of them, which can't be right, but she enjoys it. Jack is doing some training with a guy who works with a bunch of players in the off-season, when they're home for the summer, and borrows Alicia's membership pass to the McCord to see an exhibition that Larissa says he absolutely has to go to, although he doesn't want Alicia to come with him. Alicia rolls her eyes and shows Bob some pictures on her computer, later - it's, like, teapots that look like dicks in bondage gear, and other stuff.

"I was on the annual ball committee, I'm at the museum all the time, it's not like I haven't seen it," Alicia says, but Bob can see how dick teapots might be extra awkward around your mother. He is privately glad that Alicia hadn't wanted him as arm candy at anything involving the dick teapots.

Jack seems happy through all of it, even when he's joining Bob in the hot tub in the evening, wincing from a hard day at the gym, or coming out of a Skype session with Larissa after his museum trip, shaking his head.

"She's worse than an art history final," Jack says, but he's smiling.

He smiles a lot - when his phone chimes with a new message, when he tells them at dinner that he's booked his flights for his three-stop trip. Bob and Alicia exchange glances sometimes, but Bob doesn't want to say anything when Jack seems so happy, so he bites his tongue on his concern.

"Look at this," Alicia says one night, when Bob is out of the hot tub and in bed and trying to decide which shoulder is bothering him more. "Remember when those three kids on the Aces got scratched?"

Bob does, if only because it was pretty unusual for a coach to sit out his entire second line.

"Deadspin has pictures of the three of them out clubbing with Kent the night before," Alicia says. "Drunk, clearly, and the youngest wasn't even 21."

"Which is a ridiculous drinking age," Bob says reflexively.

"My point is Kent is in all the pictures, doing all the same things, but he didn't get scratched," Alicia says.

"Nothing ever sticks to him," Bob says. "He'll have a great career in politics once he's done with hockey."

He's aware that it doesn't really make sense as an insult - he has politician friends, and has shaken more political hands and dined at more political tables than he can remember. They're not all slimeballs. He means it as one, though.

"Why are you reading that?" he asks, instead of pursuing that line of thought. "You're not going to figure out from Deadspin whether Kent is going to want to party in Wyoming."

"I might figure out whether he's seeing anyone," Alicia says, frowning. "I mean, it's not going to say so, but I know the look on him, I might be able to spot it."

"Wait," Bob says, "You don't think he's trying to _get back together_ with Jack, do you?"

Alicia gives him an impatient look, like, could he please catch up already. Bob's thoughts about the backpacking trip have mostly been "what if Jack starts using again" or "what if he has a major breakdown". Alicia, like always, has obviously done a lot more thinking about the possibilities.

"Jack wouldn't break up with Shitty for Kent," Bob says, testing the idea. "He's got a good thing going, he wouldn't... right?"

"Moving apart, going in different directions, who knows what he would do," Alicia says. "It's not like he ever told us they were together, how are we supposed to know how serious they are."

"He'd only see Kent twice a year during the season," Bob says, still looking for reasons it would definitely not work.

"If they were both playing," Alicia says, and then puts her hand up before Bob can answer. "No, I'm sorry, I didn't want to get too far into this before bed. I'm going to read a chapter of something silly, and then I'll get the lights?"

Alicia does this, open up some can of worms and then slam the lid back on. Bob doesn't really mind, he gets a chance to try to catch up, or get his questions in order, at least, before she brings it up again.

He thinks about it over the next couple of days, watches Jack grin at his phone and tries to guess whether it might be Kent, what kind of thing they might be saying to each other. It used to be pretty obvious what was going on in the basement, red mouths and a careful five-foot distance and sometimes even pillows on laps, like that wasn't just going to draw attention that there was something there to hide. Jack probably wouldn't send sex texts in front of them, any more than Alicia would read werewolf porn sitting next to Jack on a plane - or would he? But the texts could be sweet things, or jokes, or meal planning for the backpacking trip for all Bob knows. Or they could be from Shitty after all, or other Samwell friends. Bob doesn't want to pry. He just wants to _know_.

*

Jack's flight to BWI, where he's meeting up with Shitty and renting a car for their expedition, is unpleasantly early, so Bob takes him up on his offer to get a taxi to the airport so that nobody has to get up to drive him. Bob can't sleep in as long as he sometimes wishes he could, any more - the dubious perks of aging - but he'd just as soon not have to get up earlier than the latest he can manage. And the same for Alicia. She hasn't been sleeping well, Bob knows. He'll get up in the night to pee and realize when he comes back to bed that she's lying there awake, thinking, worrying.

"He's okay," Bob murmurs, rubbing her arm or her back. "He's fine, he's fine."

"You know, I could be worrying about other things," Alicia tells him the next morning. "My health. Your health. Canadian politics. American politics. Plenty of things to worry about."

"But were you?" Bob asks, pretty sure he knows the answer.

"No." Alicia slumps. "I feel bad for worrying when he's so happy. Like I'm saying I don't trust him."

"No," Bob says. "It's like the therapist said. When things look bad, that seems bad, because maybe they're bad again, but when things seem good that can also feel bad because what if they're actually bad soon."

"I don't think that's what he said," Alicia says, laughing at him, but it makes sense to Bob. Losing is no good, but win streaks can also be hard because sometimes they make you think more about losing than you would have in a more mixed situation. Winning and losing are both conditions you have to learn to mentally manage. Jack is on a happiness streak, which is good, but that doesn't mean there's no work to do.

*

Jack sends photos from West Virginia: Shitty at a picnic table, a railway bridge, a bird, Shitty posing with wax-museum figures dressed in American Civil War costumes. One night he calls - the weekly call - and tries to explain the significance of Paint Creek, Shitty shouting additions and interjections in the background, until Shitty snatches the phone entirely (there's a scuffling noise) and takes over. Bob's English is just fine but sometimes when Shitty gets gabbling away he has no idea what he's talking about. It seems to involve unions and workers and someone called Mother Jones, which Bob thought was a magazine that Alicia used to get. There's more scuffling and then Jack is back, laughing and apologizing.

"See, they must be fine," Bob tells Alicia, once they're off the phone. "That didn't sound like a breakup."

"I guess," Alicia says. "I just want to be ready. If he's going to bring Kent back here, we have to be ready to support him. We have to be nice."

"That's me," Bob says, "Nice Bob," and goes in for the neck kiss, which gets him a giggle out of Alicia.

He tries to think about it later, though, because Alicia is right, it is better to be ready. Jack is an adult now. If he brings Kent home with him as his boyfriend, they won't need to be sneaking around in the basement. Kent could just follow Jack up to his room and they could close the door, and come back down together, and there would be Kent Parson at Bob's dinner table like he never left it, except older and richer and holding more records Jack will never catch up to. And if Jack doesn't mind, why should Bob? If Jack doesn't hold any grudges over anything from Juniors, how could Bob justify any. Water under the bridge, as they say. Maybe it's the same bridge as another bridge to cross.

He decides to go practice. "Fly By Night" is almost sounding ready to play for Alicia. If Jack is going to change his life again they just can't pretend, heh.

*

Jack flies from BWI to Atlanta, sending them one last photo, a selfie of himself and Shitty taken by Shitty. They look tanned, and Shitty is scruffy in such a way that it isn't clear whether he's growing a beard or just hasn't been shaving. Jack is clean-shaven and is smiling at Shitty instead of at the camera. It's a good photo of Jack, and Bob writes back asking Jack to be sure to thank Shitty for stealing his phone to take it. The photos dry up after that - Bob supposes that the Georgia leg of the trip is less about sight-seeing and more just a social visit, so that makes sense. Jack is probably plaguing Eric with training tips while Eric tries to tempt him into pie. Bob's heard a little about the pies. Eric has two more years at Samwell and no idea what he's doing next - not looking for a sports career, is Bob's understanding - so maybe Jack is giving career advice too? He's always been a good leader like that, even when he was struggling himself.

From Atlanta Jack flies to Salt Lake City, where Kent picks him up, having driven up from Las Vegas. Bob had given in to paranoia and bought Jack a satellite phone that should work from anywhere, so in theory, Jack isn't out of reach of help. Bob could have a helicopter in there to pick them up in a few hours, he thinks. He'd tried to make that sound more like "if one of you broke your leg" than "if you have a mental breakdown because your ex is an asshole" when he'd mentioned this possibility to Jack. At least they're not sharing a tent? Bob thinks? Jack had bought a pile of camping things, one of them must have been a tent? Jack sends some photos of mountains on their way to the trailhead, and then radio silence.

When Bob gets out of the shower, realizes he left his phone by the hot tub, and discovers he has a message from Jack, a day before Jack should be back in from the wilderness, he feels a surge of panic.

"Licia!" he shouts, stabbing at the button to dial his voicemail. "Did Jack call you? I missed a call, I have a message - "

Alicia appears like she just teleported, still naked except for a towel around her hair.

"Is he hurt? Is he okay? Are they eloping to Jackson Hole to get married?"

Bob's voicemail is ringing, and he holds up his hand to signal that he needs to listen.

" _This is Jack, we came in early, I'll call again later._ " He sounds okay - a little fuzzy, like the signal wasn't good, but his voice sounds normal.

"Let me hear," Alicia whispers loudly, and Bob presses replay and hands her the phone.

"He sounds happy," Alicia says, after listening twice. "I think they are back together. I think they spent a couple of nights in a tent, in sleeping bags, and thought, you know what, this is Brokeback Mountain bullshit, we could go get a bed - "

"Or married?" Bob asks. He's trying not to make a face about Brokeback Mountain, which he doesn't recall as a movie where people were very nice to each other.

"Okay, that was dumb," Alicia says. "Maybe a bear ate their food or something."

They are mutually on edge for the rest of the afternoon, twitching at sounds and not accomplishing anything. When the phone rings around dinner time Bob picks up on the first ring.

"Oh, we're still in Wyoming," Jack says cheerfully, after the initial greetings and demands for his status and location. "Found a motel with a couple of rooms. We just couldn't handle the mosquitos any more. You wouldn't believe! Like a cloud of gnats, like it wasn't just the biting, we had to try not to breathe 'em in, and DEET didn't do a thing. One of us had to be waving them off all the time, if Kenny was setting up the stove, I had to be waving my arms around over his head. We spent the first half-hour in the tent every night killing the ones that got in when we opened the zipper. I guess Kenny mostly camped in the high desert before and it was never so bad. I'm not sure I got one decent picture, I kept flinching when they went for my face."

"Oh," Alicia and Bob say, looking at each other over the phone they're holding between them. "That sounds terrible, honey," Alicia elaborates.

"Beautiful mountains," Jack says, sounding more like himself. "Might do some genealogy research in Salt Lake City with the extra day, see if we're in that Mormon library."

"Sure," Alicia says. "Uh... tell Kent we're sorry to hear about the mosquitos?"

"Sure," Jack says. "He says hi."

"Mosquitos," Bob says, when they're off the phone. "We got worried over mosquitos."

"He said motel _rooms_ ," Alicia says. "But they were in a tent together. They might have gotten separate rooms if they were worried about being recognized?"

"Did he sound high?" Bob asks. "He had a lot to say."

"He was probably glad to be able to open his mouth without a mosquito flying in," Alicia says.

*

Bob decides the odds break down like this: 40% chance Jack comes home and announces he's dating Kent, 20% chance he comes home and admits he's been dating Shitty, 40% chance he doesn't say anything and they get to keep wondering. It's not like he's been very forthcoming about his dating life so far, unless he really didn't have any relationships at Samwell at all. Maybe it is just all hookups nowadays, Bob thinks he read something about how millennials don't date.

They pick Jack up at the airport, and he's hardly buckled in before his phone is out and he's texting someone. Bob sneaks a look in the rearview - Jack looks a little nervous. Bob tries to keep his eyes on the road but he isn't entirely surprised when he hears a deep breath from the backseat.

"Mama? Papa? I have something I need to ask you."

Bob and Alicia trade quick glances across the front seat. Alicia looks wide-eyed but also ready to fight a tornado. Bob's trying to look calm and definitely not like he's going to fight anybody.

"I was wondering," Jack says, "If it would be okay with you if I invited Bittle up to stay for a week before I go to Providence and training camp starts."

"Bittle," Alicia says.

"Eric," Bob says, like she might be confused about who Bittle is, as opposed to why he is the person being named in this conversation.

"Right," Jack says. "We're, um. Dating."

"Oh!" Alicia says, a little too loudly. "That's wonderful, Jack, he seems very nice. Of course we'd be happy to have Eric visit."

"Of course," Bob chimes in. _Eric?_ Bob had Eric at 0%. Bob did not know Eric was in this picture.

"Thank you," Jack says, and Bob takes another look in the mirror. Jack is smiling at his phone like it's the best thing he's ever seen. Bob's never seen quite that look on his face, before; Jack never looked like that about Shitty, and now Bob isn't sure they were ever actually together at all.

And if had been Kent Jack was looking like that about, Bob thinks, all of his objections would have blown away, and it wouldn't have been hard to be nice. Won't be hard to be nice, if they're friends again. Why not.

Bob knows the idea of "one day at at time" came up in Jack's recovery, and he and Alicia haven't always been great about that. Alicia asking freshman Jack about his major while he was choosing his first classes. Bob asking Jack for a forecast of the season when the coaches were still finalizing the team. So much of parenting had been about thinking on a longer time scale than a kid could, it had taken a deliberate adjustment in Bob's thinking to start thinking of Jack as having enough perspective to make adult decisions, to trust that they didn't have to prod him to think ahead. Bob knows that Jack sitting in his back seat staring dreamily at his phone isn't anything he and Alicia did, and it might not even be anything Jack did, in the sense of doing anything on purpose. Some things in life nobody could plan for.

But here's Jack, alive and happy and apparently in love with someone Bob never would have guessed. And they did that, they got him far enough that Jack could get himself the rest of the way.

Bob is definitely not tearing up, he has to drive this car.

"He says he'd love to visit," Jack says, and Alicia reaches across the front seat to put her hand on Bob's arm. Bob can see her in his peripheral vision, keeping her face calm, brimming inside with emotion she won't let out until they can close the door of their bedroom and she can thrill and revel in Jack's happiness to her heart's content.

In the back seat, Jack makes a soft, fond noise, reacting to whatever else Eric has texted.

Bob keeps driving, smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> The dick teapots are from a real exhibition from 2015; you can [see them here](https://www.musee-mccord.qc.ca/en/exhibitions/camp-fires-the-queer-baroque-of-leopold-l-foulem-paul-mathieu-and-richard-milette/). The mosquitos in the Wind River Range really are about that bad, or at least they were 25 years ago. Beautiful mountains, though.


End file.
